Man who killed wife in front of sons jailed

The boys, aged five and three, looked on as Tourgay Djevdet, 50, throttled their 38-year-old mother, Aysel Djevdet, for at least 20 seconds following a row.

Prosecutor Zoe Johnson said the older boy was later allowed to use toys to demonstrate what had happened on the evening of the killing last December.

He described seeing blood coming from his mother's mouth after the attack in the kitchen of the family home in Palmers Green, north London.

Djevdet, a Turkish Cypriot who came to Britain as a child, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Psychiatrists had assessed that he was suffering from a depressive illness with psychotic symptoms at the time of the killing, the Old Bailey heard.

Djevdet and his wife of nine years, who was Kurdish, were said to have had a relationship punctuated by frequent rows.